Mike Hawash

Maher Mofeid "Mike" Hawash (12 December 1964-) was a Palestinian-American engineer who was arrested for attempting to join the Taliban in Afghanistan with other members of the "Portland Seven" al-Qaeda cell.

Biography
Maher Mofeid Hawash was born on 12 December 1964 in Nablus, Palestine, and he emigrated to the United States in 1984, obtaining degrees in computer science and engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. In 1995, he married a Christian woman in Oregon five years after becoming a US citizen. However, the death of his father led to Hawash converting to extreme Islam in 2000, and he grew a beard, covered his head with a prayer cap, paid off the mortgage on his house (due to the ban on paying interest on loans in the Islamic faith), regularly attended the Islamic Center of Portland, and told his friends to call him Maher, even though he had been known as "Mike" for many years. After 9/11, he became withdrawn and unfriendly, and he said that Muslims could not have been responsible for the attacks, saying that it was not right for the US to retaliate against the Taliban in Afghanistan for harboring al-Qaeda. Hawash proceeded to join the "Portland Seven" cell of al-Qaeda in Portland, Oregon, and he was twice arrested; once for shooting guns at a rock quarry on 29 September 2001, and for a second time after he twice failed to enter Afghanistan to help the Taliban. Hawash was released in 2009 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.